This is what he recommends:
From atmospheric carbon capture through extensive seaweed farming, CO2 snow production in Antarctica and the manufacture of carbon-rich biochar to reflecting the sun’s rays by releasing sulphur into the atmosphere and painting landscapes and cities white, Flannery outlines an array of innovative technologies that give cause for hope.
Every single one of those suggestions are band aid solutions that ultimately fail to address the underlying cause of their necessity. Sure they could help a little but why would we want to make all our towns blindingly white and identical the world over for example when doing so ruins architecture which is one of the largest defining qualities of every culture not to mention it actually helping to make the problem worse with the constant maintenance and production of the paint? I won't even get started on the million plus reasons why geoengineering is retarded or how when plants die they ultimately release all their carbon back as they decay.
Deep down we all know that human existence has a negative effect on this planet which means the fewer of us there are the better off the world would be. It's just no one wants to admit that people need to be killed off in such numbers that Thanos would look like a pussy because if we admit that we then have to consider the reasons why certain people should live or die which is horribly uncomfortable to think about. It makes you feel like a racist, it makes you feel like a eugenicist and really just plain evil in general but we already have examples from nature to reflect upon that proves it is the right course of action to take. Just look at what happens when kangaroos breed out of control for example. They all suffer until they start dying off but can cause so much damage between now and then the humane thing to do is to thin the herd. We don't like to do it but we know it's ultimately morally correct to forcibly bring them back in balance with nature and lessen their suffering and all I'm saying is that we need to take a similar approach with ourselves.

You're kidding yourself if you think there's a technological solution that doesn't result in the human population going up which is literally the sole cause of the environmental damage we're doing as a species. Even if I were wrong though how much of the Earth should be dedicated to a single species? We've chopped down the majority of forests, we've raped the oceans for food and every single person that's born has a mouth that needs feeding and absolutely will put their foot down claiming some space as for themselves displacing other species. The more of us there are the less room there is for everything else and there's no technological solution for that.
You may call me insane for thinking population control is the only viable cure for what ails this planet but I think you're the insane one for ignoring it merely because it makes you feel bad to think about it. I get how it's cold, ruthless and we'd lose what remains of our humanity going down that path which is why you'd never consider it an option but that doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it morally objectionable and even then that depends on how much of a greater good you believe such actions would result in.

Western lifestyles are spreading the globe over at an alarming rate. Don't get me wrong it's good for those people to have a higher quality of life but the more people that get it the less the Earth can support. We can either have more people living a caveman type existence or we can have less people living in a high tech society. Either way balance will be reached so what is it you'd prefer? More people living a shit life or less people living a good one? Now if you pick less people as any sane person would due to the fact the memory of science and technology will inspire people to rebuild their lost societies, you still have to acknowledge that some people are going to continue breeding out of control unless their numbers are kept in check by force. You can forcibly sterilize them, you can bomb them, whatever, point is if you don't do something we're going to go back up to our current numbers in no time at all putting us in an even worse position than we're in now because absolutely everyone will be living like a western lifestyle and most likely to a higher degree than we do now.
But hey, let's assume I'm completely wrong as you don't believe it would make a difference. In your ideal world how would you go about fixing the issue? Make yourself emperor of Earth and your will gets done no matter what anyone else thinks. What do you do?

The only action that would have any real effect is an immediate reduction in the human population. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. The hard part is setting a desirable number of people that we believe can live in harmony with the earth and the rest of it's inhabitants and then choosing who gets to live and die.
We're never going to have a technological solution that allows the human population to continue growing and sterilization of the masses is still picking and choosing but allowing the carnage to continue for the rest of their lives. We can't rely on mother nature to give us the solution in the form of a new flu or plague either as there's an extremely good chance we'll cure it before it lowers our numbers to acceptable levels and then due to it's indiscriminate nature we're just going to breed out of control again anyway.
So if you want to be real about it you need to find reasons why certain people should die. Given that it's a population issue the logical place to start is by looking at which groups of people are having more children than others. If your group is having say 6-8 kids per family on average like you see in a lot of African and Muslim nations that's considerably worse than what you see in a lot of western nations like Germany where they're having 1.3 children per family which is below the 2.1 children needed to maintain any given population. If you do not address this fundamental fact what's going to happen is that you'll get us to a billion people or whatever and then the problematic reproduction begins again which will bring us right back to where we started.
Now lets assume you can't bring yourself to be an eco nazi and want to preserve the other peoples and cultures of the planet. Your only option is to set hard numbers for every race and force them to kill their own using whatever criteria they judge to be fair for themselves and there needs to be harsh retaliation for refusing to keep to within their limits. The punishment would have to be so severe that they'd rather kill their own so essentially you're going to need to nuke them or worse otherwise they absolutely will not comply.
So how strongly do you believe that level of action should be taken? Literally no one will find it acceptable so buckle up kids because we're gonna watch the world burn.

HEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!
WTF IS this shit? It started over a period of like 6 hours and has spread to other pots as well
The layer I was meant to be able to peel back laughed at my attempt to reveal what was underneath so I gave it two caps to about 750mL to hit everything hard. I sprayed all my cacti so wish me luck.
I'll update again in the morning...

Today has been a good day. I scored a J2 x Psycho0 from @MountainGoat and some pupping cream and seeds from Makka Pakka's Night Garden.
It's also been a shit day. I hurt myself applying pupping cream to the vast majority of my cacti and then some filthy fucker attacked my cacti again. This time it happened to my beloved Crazy Spine
Oh well, the other cacti pulled through no problems and the pupping cream will bring about a massive replication of my garden in the near future so if those psychonaut cunts want to have a nibble and trip balls for the rest of the day they can have their nibble.

I've always watered everything I've potted up the second I was done. I think I picked up the habit from watching Burke's backyard as a kid. Oh well, guess that's just another long line of habits my cacti are forcing me to break. Thanks for the advice guys

That's my point exactly. If they follow the laws as they're currently laid out we're shit out of luck. We'll say yes, you lost, here's the spoils and we're still criminals. When in human history has the loser of a war been given such terms? From my perspective we either win the war on drugs and give them everything or we lose and give them everything which makes denying them the cause we should fight for. If we decide that they won't get the market to themselves we have to decide to go against international law and be willing to suffer the consequences or remove the laws entirely and stick our finger up to the UN using technicality to set us free.
It's really that simple. Either we give them everything or we deny them. What would you give the side who declared war against you and lost? Personally I'd give them nothing and make them consider themselves lucky to remain alive.

The ONLY way I'm wrong is if you convince our politicians to remove Australia as a signatory to the convention on narcotics. Do you really believe they will do so as a sign of defeat in the war on drugs and suffer the consequences the rest of the world will impose upon us or do you believe they're more likely to reap the rewards of the black market driving prices up without anything negative from outside impacting them at all?
I'll let you know exactly what we're in for. There's only going to be a handful of legal producers in the country and everyone who steps out of their monopoly is going to be demonized as tax dodging, child endangering, black market suppliers, etc. and literally everyone will be on board to hunt us down to the point the government is given the go ahead to finally hunt us down using the power cycles our grow lights produce.
Herbal cannabis is going to be grown in massive greenhouses with a handful of tomatoes to ensure that the offgassing of the tomatoes leads to an entirely sterile female crop. This will then be sold as a premium product for higher prices than what the black market currently commands. The massive outside crops are where no fucks will be given as they will see the fields not as producing a smokable product but a field of chemical potential. They're going to see cannabinoids and terpenes only because their individual blends are what they're going to be able to patent and massively profit from. It might be nice being able to go down to the shops and buy 25 different types of oils that have been made in a standardized way and a handful of nearly perfectly grown and cured buds (they definitely will be harvested early amongst other things) but they absolutely will use their monopoly status along with their so called rigorous testing and whatnot to drive the prices up to crazy levels.
These insane prices will see people trying to grow in their backyard which satellites with their shitty resolution can easily detect. The people who grow indoors will be undone by their power companies. Even those who manually turn on their lights and use a combination of indoor and outdoor growing will end up being caught as the police will be given the right to invade the privacy of anyone they suspect of cultivation which will be based on the higher electricity usage levels and the times that it was used.
Now the general public is going to see all this availability and call us pieces of shit for going outside the system. They will see it as avoiding the same taxes they pay making it unfair, they will be told that we're doing so to illegally profit, etc. and when you have 90% of the population cheering the government on you can kiss your freedom goodbye.
In short it will always be legal for them but never us regardless of how much you're willing to pay for your license. Like you said it will be an unworkable system and they will use that very fact to shut us down.
History has proven that governments aren't there for the people and their bottom line revolves around money. Since they are assured of a monopoly they absolutely will take it and fight with everything they can to defend it. If you think it's bad now with LEO just wait until they have the right to collect every last cent while simultaneously being able to imprison those of us that dare to step outside of their monopoly.
I'm not wrong with the things I've said at all. The war will continue with the efforts doubled when they declare themselves losers and get to reap the spoils.